Friday, April 06, 2007

Cheney Agrees With Limbaugh On "Stalinist" Senate Democrats

In a wide-ranging radio interview on Thursday with Rush "Oxycontin King" Limbaugh, Vice President Dick Cheney enjoyed some laughs with the right-wing blowhard, including ripping into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her trip to Syria, agreeing with Limbaugh that Democrats want the U.S. to be defeated in Iraq and concurring that the treatment received by Swift Boat Sugar Daddy Sam Fox in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "Stalinist."

I bet Cheney hasn't had this many yuks since he watched Limbaugh make fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease symptoms.

The most telling part of how sincere the White House is in talking about a new "bipartisan spirit" following the 2006 elections, came when Limbaugh talked about the Foreign Relations Committee hearing in which John Kerry (D-MA) and Barack Obama (D-IL) questioned Swiftie Sam Fox. In that hearing, the Senators had the temerity to ask Fox if funding a bunch of known liars so they could smear a decorated Veteran and swing a presidential election might raise questions about his character and personal qualifications to represent the country diplomatically.

Limbaugh waxed poetic about Fox's life story -- gee, did you know his parents came here as Ukrainian immigrants way before their son turned out to be a self-made scumbag? -- called him a "great American" and said he was "… treated horribly by Senator Kerry and others on that committee, simply because he had made a political donation."

Here's more:

Limbaugh: "They essentially told him he did not have freedom of speech in this country, until he would apologize, until he would go up to Kerry and apologize for supporting the Swift Boats. Now the President has recess-appointed him. And of course, the Democrats have said they're going to investigate this and going to look into this.

"This is the kind of move that garners a lot of support from the people in the country. This shows the administration willing to engage these people and not allow them to get away with this kind of -- well, my term -- you don't have to accept it -- Stalinist behavior from these people on that committee."

Cheney: : Well, you're dead on, Rush. I know Sam well. He's a good friend of mine and has been for many years. I think he's a great appointment. He'll do a superb job as our Ambassador to Belgium. I was delighted when the President made the recess appointment. He clearly has that authority under the Constitution. And you're right, John Kerry basically shot it down.

Rush freakin' Limbaugh labels the conduct of United States Senators "Stalinist behavior" and the vice president says "you're dead on, Rush."

Kind of gives you warm, bipartisan fuzzies, doesn’t it?

After describing as "theatrics" the efforts of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Pelosi to bring the troops home from Iraq, Limbaugh asked Cheney the following: "Can you share with us whether or not you understand their devotion, or their seeming allegiance to the concept of U.S. defeat?"

"I can't," said Cheney, obviously not wanting to disabuse Limbaugh of the notion that the leading Congressional Democrats want to see America go down in defeat. "It seems to me so abundantly clear, Rush, that we really need to prevail in this conflict, that there's an awful lot riding on it."

"So it's absolutely essential we do it," Shotgun Dick continued. "I don't know why, what the motive is. They seem to think that we can withdraw from Iraq and walk away from it. They ignore the lessons of the past. Remember what happened in Afghanistan. We had been involved in Afghanistan in the '80s, supporting the Mujahadin against the Soviets and prevailed, we won, everybody walked away. And in the '90s, Afghanistan became a safe haven for terrorists, an area for training camps where al Qaeda trained 20,000 terrorists in the late '90s in the base from which they launched attacks against the United States on 9/11."

"So those are very real problems and to advocate withdrawal from Iraq at this point seems to me simply would play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."

So, to sum up: The Vice President of the United States agrees with a right-wing nutjob -- who has said that anyone who speaks out against America should be deported -- that Senate Democrats have behaved like "Stalinist(s)" and that, of course, Democrats want al-Qaeda to prevail over America.

Political writer Bob Geiger is the award-winning author of the Yellow Dog Blog and BobGeiger.com and specializes in coverage of the U.S. Senate. He won the 2005 Weblog Awards prize for Best New Blog and was a finalist in the Koufax Awards in 2005 for his column "I Know This Little Boy in New Orleans."

He is the coauthor of The Real McCain and his work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the New York Journal News. A contributing writer to The Huffington Post and Alternet, Bob also makes appearances to comment on Senate activity on many popular radio programs.